Kurban Said - Chamanzaminli's Links To The Pseudonym "Kurban Said"

Chamanzaminli's Links To The Pseudonym "Kurban Said"

Interestingly, Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli was a "seyid" himself, allegedly having been descended from Mohammed on both sides of his family. As for the name "Gurban," Chamanzaminli had written a short story entitled "Gurban."

In addition, he had referred to himself as "gurban" in correspondence to Azerbaijan Soviet authorities in 1925 when he was seeking permission to return home from Europe as he had been on a diplomatic assignment abroad representing the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) government which was in opposition to the Bolsheviks. Chamanzaminli realized that historical circumstances made him a likely victim of politics, as most of ADR government officials had been killed when the Bolsheviks came to power. Chamanzaminli would have had to have left the manuscript Ali and Nino in Europe at this time 1925-1926 as it was critical of the Bolshevik regime. Had he returned to Baku with the manuscript in hand, it would have been sheer suicide as the Bolsheviks had executed most of the government officials of the former regime and any opposition.

As it was, a decade later, Azerbaijan Writers Union in 1937 were under orders from Stalin to purge anyone from their ranks who did not embrace the Soviet ideology. YVC was accused of introducing "counter-revolutionary" ideas in the characters of his anti-heroes in his novels and soon afterwards, he was arrested and sentenced to the GULAG where he died in 1943.

Note that Chamanzaminli used the pseudonym "Ali Khan Chamanzaminli" in some of his earliest works, published in 1911. Ali Khan is the name of the main character in the novel "Ali and Nino". Furthermore, the autobiographical essays, literary works, life experiences as well as the political stance of Chamanzaminli clearly link the pseudonym Kurban Said to him as the core author of Ali and Nino.